HMS New Zealand arrives in Auckland

When HMS New Zealand visited the City of Sails in late April 1913, tens of thousands of Aucklanders turned out to welcome her both on land and, as this film shows, at sea.

The film captures the size of the battleship as it steamed into Rangitoto Channel towards the port. The New Zealand Herald newspaper memorably described its “three massive funnels, then all the huge grey bulk of battle-cruiser... sullenly majestic, awful in portent, relentless as death itself.” Waitemata Harbour is shown packed with at least 200 spectator craft full of curious men and women and laden in bunting: “… ferry-boats and steamers crowded on their sterns, intrepid men and boys lugged at the oars of tiny dinghies and rowing boats, rowers in outriggers joined in the procession until so great was the traffic of the bewildering array of craft that the water was churned into white-crested waves and the smaller craft were tossed about like so many corks.”

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HMS New Zealand arrives in Auckland

When HMS New Zealand visited the City of Sails in late April 1913, tens of thousands of Aucklanders turned out to welcome her both on land and, as this film shows, at sea.

The film captures the size of the battleship as it steamed into Rangitoto Channel towards the port. The New Zealand Herald newspaper memorably described its “three massive funnels, then all the huge grey bulk of battle-cruiser... sullenly majestic, awful in portent, relentless as death itself.” Waitemata Harbour is shown packed with at least 200 spectator craft full of curious men and women and laden in bunting: “… ferry-boats and steamers crowded on their sterns, intrepid men and boys lugged at the oars of tiny dinghies and rowing boats, rowers in outriggers joined in the procession until so great was the traffic of the bewildering array of craft that the water was churned into white-crested waves and the smaller craft were tossed about like so many corks.”

Among the crowds on the water when HMS New
Zealand arrived in Auckland in April 1913 was Charles Newham, a local
topical film maker. He shot this film for Dominion (NZ) Film Manufacturing
Company. It is one of the few surviving records of the visit to New Zealand of
the battleship gifted by the New Zealand people to the British Royal Navy.

Newham
released this film to Hayward's Picture Theatre Lyric under the title "The
Arrival of HMS New Zealand in Auckland". It also screened at Globe Continuous
Pictures and the Queen’s Theatre. Newham’s film "was received by the
patrons attending the theatre with many demonstrations of approval." (New Zealand Herald, 2 May 1913, p.5)